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  • Not everyone wants or cares to have the tools, not everyone wants to be a mechanic.

    More to the point, not everybody can afford to be his own buyer and mechanic. There is an opportunity cost to seeking out the bargains and then building up a bike from parts, and an opportunity cost of tying up capital in tools. Let's see what they are.

    The tools. We need, to assemble a bike from new parts including boxed wheels onto a properly prepared frame, a torque wrench, some Allen key bits, cable cutters, cassette lockring tool, BB cup tool, chain tool and possibly the extension tool for the centre bolt of UT cranks, since we're building with Chorus. Also a tin of Copaslip and a tube of grip paste. Total outlay about £200, of which half is lost immediately in depreciation, and then £5 p.a. if you look at where else you're going to stash £100 other than hanging on to your nearly new tools.

    The labour. Probably 4 hours, including the search online for bargains. Cost, assuming you could be doing your day job in the time, and if you're earning £50k p.a., around the 90th percentile of UK earners, about £100, and let's say another £100 to spend time reading the manuals and looking at some YouTube instructional videos.

    So, for your first bike, you're looking at £300, and then a further £110 for each subsequent one if you upgrade every couple of years, assuming you're in the 90th percentile of earners and you're smart enough to be getting 5% on your investments. If you're earning less, your costs are correspondingly lower.

    Well, it turns out you're paying Dani £600 to source and assemble your bike, so I'm assuming all his punters are earning over £100k p.a., or he thinks his expert guidance in selecting the components is worth hundreds of pounds to lower earners. I think the dodgy selections on his show bike give us a clear idea of what his expert guidance is really worth.

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